Welcome to the Newsletter

Hello, good day, and welcome to Last Week in International Trade.

Every Monday, I publish a newsletter highlighting the main newsworthy activities from the prior week in the wide world of international trade. I primarily focus on US trade sanctions and export controls, with occasional forays into other areas that interest me and hopefully you. Content includes news articles you may have missed, regulatory actions from the US and other governments, and other practical information you can use in your work. Non-US regulatory actions and news of broad interest will also be included.

I may also add completely random things that catch my eye. Turns out there’s a lot of content out there on the Internet.

For now, the newsletter is free and will remain so for anyone subscribing until further notice. I may add premium options or move to paid subscriptions going forward but not yet.

What You’ll Get

Useful information for trade professionals, attorneys, interested well-wishers, and friends and family I’ve corralled into subscribing. When there are new regulatory actions that affect international trade, you’ll find them here. Particularly as the Biden Administration gets up and running, I hope to be a reliable source of new information as regulations are rescinded or revised and new ones emerge.

You’ll also get occasional editorial commentary. I have some strong views about the utility and effectiveness of a lot of trade regulation, and especially the difficulties trade professionals have in trying to remain compliant in a world where government guidance is often vague, contradictory, or simply confusing. This world can also be a little dry (well, very dry), so I try to keep your attention and bring you back to the newsletter every week by having a distinctive voice.

The newsletter is a work in progress and format, content, et cetera, may and almost certainly will change as time goes on.

What You Won’t Get

Many law firms publish client alerts on the matters discussed here. I’ve certainly written my fair share of them. And they all start the same way — as a fictional but all too familiar example:

“On January 11, 2021, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of the US Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) released an update to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (“CACR”), removing from the scope of certain remittance-related general authorizations any transactions involving entities or subentities…”

And then you want to poke your eyes out with needles.

I call this sort of thing “throat-clearing.” It’s an easy way to start a client alert when you’re staring at a blank screen, but it’s close to useless for someone wondering what the heck they have to do now. So what do I do instead?

I won’t make you want to poke your eyes out with needles. I assume that if you’re reading the newsletter you have a solid familiarity with this world. You probably have figured out what OFAC is if I refer to it, or the EAR, the ITAR, the EU, the UK, ECCNs, SDNs, and so on. If you don’t know, go Google it. Otherwise it wastes your time as a reader, and I above all promise not to waste your time.

I won’t cover random additions to and deletions from the various sanctions lists. If you need those, OFAC publishes them every time it happens. But of course, if someone like Hugh Grant suddenly becomes an SDN, that will probably be worth mentioning.

I probably won’t cover import regulations and tariffs very much. To the extent that tariff disputes bleed over into larger issues around entire bilateral relationships (for example, US-China relations), they might make an appearance. But tariffs and imports are not my area so I don’t want to pretend to be an expert.

I promise not to write too much like a lawyer. There’s a difference between using terminology and using jargon. The trade world is full of terminology that any practitioner must become conversant in, but there’s no reason to go deep into jargon-land where an interested observer can’t figure out what’s going on at all. When I was in law school my son was in elementary school, and it was often useful for thinking through issues to be able to explain them to a smart kid. Same idea applies here.

You will not get legal advice. I have to say that as an attorney, but it’s also good practice. I’m happy to give legal advice, but it won’t happen in the newsletter. See my email address below if you want to get in touch directly about anything.

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About Me

I’m Jeff Lord, an international trade attorney in the Washington DC area who has been working on these matters for a little more than ten years.

Obligatory photo:

I’ve worked for two big law firms and two big companies, all the while focusing on export controls, trade sanctions, and the usual “related matters.” I also spent time recently as general counsel for a startup, so I work hard to keep a practical perspective when giving advice. Before being a lawyer I worked in a business capacity at America Online in the 1990s and early 2000s (if you’re less than 35 years old, ask your parents what America Online was).

Any lawyer can tell you what the law says — fewer can talk to business clients in a way that helps them understand the risks and rewards of any particular path. I try to always wear my legal hat and business hat simultaneously.

Now, I’m counsel at Scale LLP, a firm of about 40 lawyers throughout the country advising clients of all size. With no offices and little overhead, Scale leverages modern technology and a distributed platform to bring Silicon Valley ingenuity to the practice of law. With expertise across disciplines, business-savvy attorneys deliver effective and efficient counsel to companies of all sizes.

You can reach me any time at jlord@scalefirm.com.

Scale LLP biography page: Jeff Lord biography

LinkedIn profile page: Jeff Lord profile

Twitter profile page: Twitter profile

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The week's news and practical guidance in sanctions, export controls, and other potentially interesting tidbits from the world of international trade

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International trade attorney